Hyper by Sanho introduced a dual wireless charging stand for the iPhone 12 and AirPods' wireless charging case. The MagSafe-compatible HyperJuice ($59) powers both devices simultaneously at 7.5 watts for the iPhone 12 and 3 watts for the AirPods with 20 watts of USB-C input, said the company.
“CTA pulled off something brilliantly” for CES 2021 that was “so complicated and so compressed in time,” said Sony Electronics North America President Mike Fasulo in an exit interview (see personals section, Feb. 4; see also 2102160026). The CES 2021 content creation “was really well done,” as were “the parameters that CTA set for quality,” said Fasulo. “There was really good promotion around it. We had really, really nice traffic.” On the negative side, Fasulo frowned upon “some issues with user interfaces and user experiences, but this is technology. You’ve got to work out some of those bugs.” Fasulo and other members of the CTA executive board “gave that feedback very clearly” to the CES team, he said. “I’m 150% convinced they’ll rectify that in plenty of time for next year.” CTA didn’t comment Tuesday. He doubts virtual events will render physical shows “obsolete” post-pandemic, nor will the physical CES “go back 100% to the way it was,” he said. “I see the hybrid going forward, which is very exciting.”
Consumer adoption of Disney+ “exceeded even our highest expectations” 15 months after its November 2019 launch, said Disney CEO Bob Chapek on a fiscal Q1 investor call Thursday. Disney+ had 94.9 million global subscribers at the end of the quarter Jan. 2. ESPN+ had 12.1 million, Hulu 39.4 million, he said. Executives on the call expressed confidence that consumers will take next month’s $1-per-month Disney+ price hike in stride and won't abandon the service. The “wealth” of intellectual property from Disney’s portfolio of “brands and franchises provides us with an incredible breadth and depth of storylines and characters to mine for Disney+ and our other streaming services,” said Chapek. “We have the ability to interconnect these storylines and characters in unprecedented ways.” Disney will debut Raya and the Last Dragon March 5 simultaneously in theaters and as a $29.99 “Premier Access” option for Disney+ members, he said.
Reviewing ASCAP and BMI music licensing consent decrees (see 2101150067) would be a waste of time and government resources, the MIC Coalition wrote President Joe Biden and congressional leaders Thursday. DOJ's closing its latest review of the decrees should be enough to conclude that leaving them in place “best serves competition,” the group wrote, quoting Senate Antitrust Subcommittee Chair Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.
Transitioning to self-service online channels and bolstering the enterprise’s digital capabilities are the top strategic priorities for customer service and support leaders in 2021, reported Gartner Thursday. It canvassed 80 customer service and support executives in October and November from business-to-business and business-to-consumer organizations to gauge their 2021 priorities, based on "the changes and challenges they encountered in 2020,” finding upgrading “legacy” contact center technology the key priority for 79%. Establishing a permanent work-from-home program was a top priority for 57% of those polled, said Gartner. “Although 2020 challenged the operations and strategy of many service and support leaders, the focus on developing a greater digital and self-service product in 2021 remained consistent,” said analyst Jacob Joseph-David. “To deliver on this digital promise, service leaders must progress beyond adding new channels and capabilities to making the functional transformation into a self-service-dominant organization.”
Beasley Broadcast Q4 net revenue fell about 5% to $68.5 million from Q4 2019. That “primarily reflects a year-over-year decrease in commercial advertising revenue due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, partially offset by growth in digital, esports and political revenue,” the radio station owner reported Wednesday. “Esports allowed us to make lemonade out of lemons last year,” CEO Caroline Beasley told investors. Operating income was $19.6 million vs. $11.2 million, the result of lower operating and corporate expenses, lower impairment losses and a land sale, the release said. The Q4 “results reflect the ongoing recovery of our business,” said the CEO in a release. The company has continued to generate month-over-month revenue growth if political ads are excluded from the calculation, she said. Caroline Beasley expects revenue from events to “hopefully” begin returning at the end of 2021 and continue into 2022. She said the company is focused on digital and attracting new advertisers in the coming year.
Direct-to-consumer selling is a “highly influential” U.S. trend, up 24% last year to $17.8 billion, the National Retail Federation reported Wednesday. Google is one of the most important channels for reaching consumers online, as consumers move from "I found it on Google" to "I bought it on Google," NRF said. Mid-2020, 45% spent more time on Amazon, up from 39% when the pandemic was in early stages. Now, half of online shoppers rely on Amazon more than pre-pandemic, the association said. Facebook’s role in consumer shopping rose, with 34% of surveyed consumers saying they use it to research products. More than half of consumers say they bought more online due to seeing Facebook advertisements; 18% use the platform to make purchases.
Encore Drive-In Nights and MetaMedia partnered to offer livestreamed concerts, sports and other events at drive-in venues across North America, they said Wednesday. Encore's network of “hundreds” of outdoor venues targets fans not traditionally reached by touring routes. June-September, Encore events played to more than 900,000 fans with concert films from Metallica, Garth Brooks, Kane Brown and Blake Shelton, it said. Encore also showed its first livestreamed event last month, an Ultimate Fighting Championship match between Dustin Poirier and Conor McGregor.
Cisco's “premise” is that enterprise customers will begin returning to physical offices in mid- to late summer, said CEO Chuck Robbins on a fiscal Q2 call Tuesday. As companies look to prepare, “we’ve seen significant uptake in Wi-Fi 6,” he said. “That will require switching infrastructure as people come back to the office and begin to put load on those wireless networks.” Cisco assumes every meeting in the future will be “hybrid,” even after people return to physical workspaces, he said. “You’ll have people in the office, and you’ll have people remote. In order to accommodate that, we suspect most of our customers will be putting video units in every conference room.” Cisco’s “strong momentum” with Webex continued in the quarter ended Jan. 23, said Robbins. The platform served nearly 600 million users, and “we are connecting over 6 billion calls every month,” he said. “Our goal is to deliver a 10X better experience than just in-person interactions.”
Consumers’ broadband upgrade plans suggest many households consider certain COVID-19-related changes “permanent,” said Parks Associates analyst Steve Nason Wednesday, citing over-the-top video service stacking as a contributor. Broadband usage is higher for half of U.S. broadband households since the start of the pandemic, reported Parks, saying in Q3, 24% of fixed broadband homes planned to upgrade their speed in the next six months, up 6 points sequentially. Some 45% of broadband households subscribe to three or more OTT services, and many are planning to add new ones such as Disney+, Apple TV+, HBO Max and Peacock as a permanent part of their OTT menus, beyond the “Big 3” of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu. “Many traditional pay-TV subscribers are migrating to online pay-TV offerings or standalone OTT services,” Nason said. “Traditional providers, who still comprise the majority of the pay-TV market, have to continually seek ways to integrate online video services into their offerings either through homegrown solutions or external partnerships.”